It seems like a strange combination, yet these are the three things which were the genesis of this story. My wife, two sons and I live in Marianna, FL, adjacent to Florida Caverns State Park. The Park’s main feature is a series of underground limestone caverns. Our home’s well goes through 300 feet of this limestone, thus making a 300 foot long natural filter. The result is great tasting water and we are spoiled.

In 1997, my wife and I bought a Fifth Wheel—our first camper. One of our sons had signed-up for a drawing at an RV show, and won four free tickets to Six Flags in Atlanta, so that was our first trip. Everything was great. When it rained, we ran across the street to the camper and took a nap. When the rain stopped, we were back at the park, with very short lines. The only part of the trip that wasn’t great was the water in the campground—it smelled and tasted terrible. We had been spoiled by our great tasting water at home, but this seemed like a small problem to overcome, so we went to a local store, spent $30 and purchased a water filter that went on the end of the kitchen faucet. The water and my iced tea now tasted good. Problem solved—or so I thought.

Two weeks later was a camping trip to Disney World. Again, terrible tasting water. Why wasn’t my filter working? I got out the instructions, and found that the filter cartridge was only good for 40 gallons. So we had to put another $8 cartridge in the unit. After one day, we had to replace it again. This was getting expensive. Besides this, my wife didn’t like me brushing my teeth in the kitchen sink. (The filter in the kitchen did nothing for the bad tasting water in the bathroom sink). We still had a problem. Now someone is saying, “If he has such great tasting water at home, why doesn’t he fill his holding tank and take it with him?” The answer is simple—water equals weight (50 gallon is approximately 450 lb.). In an RV, weight requires horsepower. Horsepower requires fuel. Fuel costs money. In short, the 50 gallons of water can increase your fuel consumption by 5%, detract from your vehicle’s handling, decrease braking ability, increase wear and tear on your tow vehicle and RV, and increase overall operating costs. THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER WAY!!

When we got home, I checked with the RV dealers, the catalogs, and the home improvement stores. I bought parts and fittings to connect a larger filter housing to our incoming water. Now I would only have to replace the cartridge once a year. Again, problem solved—or so I thought. I showed this to a friend of mine who is a physician. He immediately recoiled and said, “Don’t drink the water!!” What could possibly be wrong? He explained that the filter cartridge was cellulose (paper) sprinkled with granular activated carbon. The carbon would reduce some bad tastes, but after a while, or during periods of inactivity (as RV’s usually encounter) bacteria would feed on the cellulose and multiply. They would then be passed into the water stream and delivered to your kitchen faucet. I was dejected. “What can I do,” I asked. He explained that the best way to overcome this problem was to use the type of filtration equipment used in the medical field. This started us down a path of R&D that resulted in third party testing and validation of the WaterPur line of filtration products.

At an RV show, we met an executive from the fastest growing, innovative, top quality RV manufacturer in the country. He took a keen interest in our quality products. In 1999, they installed our filter in their product line. It has been so well accepted that in the 2010 model year it is still there!!